The Mercenary
by plaguedlove
Summary: Voldemort's reign grows ever stronger and the Wizarding World has plunged into chaos. With mysterious deaths and links to Romanian documents, nothing is certain anymore, and everyone seems to be depending on one mysterious woman. Not HBP compliant.
1. Chapter 1

'_Crucio_!'

Her face betrayed no emotion as the woman before her writhed pitiably, emitting a terrible scream, eyes rolling, face contorted and twisted in agony like churning clay.

Her lips, set into a thin, grim, blood red line, moved not an inch as her victim, in a vain effort to remain silent, bit down and drew gleaming blood from her own.

Her eyes, cold as arctic waters, showed no remorse; hard, wooden green orbs stared dispassionately at her prey, watching the dilated pupils of her victim's eyes rolled in their sockets like never-ending spin tops.

Her hair, cascading beautifully down her body, was a waterfall of golden brown curls. A hand crept up almost imperceptibly to push it out of the way; her prisoner's hand pulled at her own scraggly raven locks, grabbing and wrenching as a distraction from the sheer torture of the curse.

Upon the armrest of the burgundy satin sofa on which she was elegantly draped, a silver-ringed hand held a wine glass, half filled with a crimson Pinot Noir. She swirled the dark liquid slowly, watching idly as the contents snaked gently in a whirlpool, before taking a small sip, savouring the exotic flavour and bouquet as it caressed her tongue. Sweet, mellow, well-aged - perfection. Satisfied, she set the goblet down upon the glass table-top beside her, and leant back, resting a creamy white elbow upon the arm of the sofa. Chin leaning against an extended index finger, she cast her victim a look of boredom suffused with smugness.

'So, Bella, was that satisfactory, or should we go another round and make it a nice even number?' she asked conversationally.

'You dirty little whore!' snarled Bellatrix furiously. 'How dare you even suggest that I would tell you of the Dark Lord's plans! If I even knew them at all? Not _only_ do you dare aspire to know His plans… You dare to speak to me as though you are my equal!' She spat out the word 'equal' as though it were a poison on her tongue.

'Oh, but I know quite well that you are privy to the Dark Lord's plans. You, as the Dark Lord's right hand, should know. Or have his preferences changed?' she said slyly, watching with satisfaction as Bellatrix's face grew angrier still. 'I suppose I should remind you which one of us has the wand,' she remarked idly, waving the length of wood, and Bellatrix's seized one languorously in her captive's direction. 'Bella, my dear, it's just you, me, and a bottle of wine, and we have the whole night ahead of us.'

Then, in a swift motion, she leaned over her sofa, hands gripping the sides so tightly that her knuckles blanched. Her voice took on a much darker tone as she whispered with savage ferocity, 'Every word you say that isn't what I want to hear heightens the chance of me carting you off to Azkaban. Or perhaps, better still, simply killing you and being done with it, making your end a swift and relatively painless one, rather than drawing it out over several more glasses of this wonderful wine.

She sat back once more, the pleasantly bored look again masking her face, and lifted the wine glass in her hand. 'Did Rabastan purchase this? It is in excellent taste,' she asked idly, then turned to Bellatrix again. 'So, the freedom of death or the hell of Azkaban. Your choice now,' she added conversationally, taking another sip.

'I would rather die than betray the Dark Lord's secrets to a filthy little blood traitor like you!' Bellatrix screeched, eyes blazing in fury.

A shadow passed over the woman's eyes at the words 'blood traitor', but it was gone as fast as it had come.

'Ah, but dead men, or women, as the case may be, tell no tales. You surely know that yourself, no? Besides which, what use would the Dark Lord's most faithful servant be if she was discovered dead, soulless, or, in a cruel, twisted irony of her own sins, turned mad from a prolonged session of Crucio?' she asked rhetorically, with a half smile playing at the edges of her lips.

And, with one, little word that has changed the courses of many lives the world over, the room was filled once more with agonised screams.

Even after the fourth Crucio was cast upon her, Bellatrix, blood streaming from her shredded lips, grinned madly and whispered, 'Again, bitch,' with a manic, taunting gleam.

Six curses later, Bellatrix was on her knees, angry welts and scratches on her arms where her nails dug in painfully as she clawed at herself to be rid of the pain. But still she said nary a word.

At eight curses, her head hit the floor with a dull thud as she collapsed, gasping desperately for air, chest heaving.

'Tell me where Voldemort is, you stupid little bitch!' the captor snarled, all pleasant pretences gone, her patience at an end.

Bellatrix laughed in her face, shades of insanity in her eyes.

As Bellatrix's captor lifted her wand after the tenth Crucio, Bellatrix's body shook as she coughed up blood, staining the cold tiles an ominous red.

'R-r-ro-man-nia-' Bellatrix choked out, the coughing racking her body once more.

'Romania?' she parroted, thrown off guard. 'Why Romania?'

'R-r-resi-resisten-resistenza…' Bellatrix gasped out, and the brunette looked up in surprise.

'Not _the_ Resistenza Ultima? That hasn't been made for centuries, not even during the reign of Grindelwald!' she said enquiringly, somewhat surprised that Voldemort would even concern himself with such a thing.

'He's… sear-searching… for th-the l-lost t-t-texts…' Bellatrix trailed off faintly, then gave one last, shuddering heave and fell limply onto the floor, dark eyes empty and lifeless, face gaunt from her years in Azkaban.

The woman looked at Bellatrix with distaste because of the mess she'd made of the flooring. The fewer Death Eaters, the better, she thought, and with that, lifted Bellatrix's chin. Whipping out two long, slim, hidden daggers, she made a swift crossing stroke upon Bellatrix's chin, just deep enough to draw blood. Tossing a small, blood red rose with two leaves and two thorns, she watched as it landed neatly upon the cross, matching the blood's hue perfectly. She then draped herself upon the sofa lazily again, sipping at the wine thirstily.

Truthfully, she was astonished that Voldemort even knew of such an obscure potion as the Resistenza Ultima, created far before the time of the notorious Borgias, who had created arsenic.

No, the recipe for this particular Elixir had been written alongside the formula for creating the elusive Philosopher's Stone; carved upon the Emerald Tablet, no less. And yet, even the Ancient Greek alchemists had been unable to decipher the writings. Only in the late Renaissance had one particular individual, Romanian born and bred Lucian Miklos, made it his life's goal to translate the Emerald Tablet's writings. An expert in linguistics, with a knack for sciences and a rough understanding of the subtle art of alchemy, Miklos set out in search of a copy of the Tablet. With it, he had set upon the task of translating and learning the secrets of the Ancient Alchemists.

This presented one problem, however. Miklos had been determined to take his secrets to the grave, quite literally. His dying request was to bury his documents with him, lest a being of evil nature come across his work. Apparently, even in death, Miklos was plagued with the thought of his translations starting a chain of wars in an effort to become immortally strong.

Sadly, his wish to protect the world from his work didn't quite come true. A group of Romanian Potions Masters, under the alias 'Kelshaviks', had learnt of his request, and had stolen the papers and diaries from his grave. Before they even had a chance to so much as open a diary, however, they were discovered and brutally tortured and murdered for the grave robbery. The officials had simply been following orders, which were to attempt to find the documents, and, if they could not, then kill the perpetrators.

But the Kelshaviks were no fools. They had hidden the documents carefully, scattering them so that only they knew where they had been kept, and, should anyone accidentally discover one, they would only have one of many, many pieces of the puzzle. Try as they might, the officials had not been able to penetrate into the Kelshaviks' network (who were then killed under the pretence of passing secrets to other countries) to find the documents which might well have started a civil war.

Although it was an amazing creation, almost no one knew about it. The Ancient Alchemists preferred to keep their works to themselves, as had Miklos and the Kelshaviks, who had taken the secret to their graves. The officials who had so vainly and fruitlessly searched for the documents had hardly known what they were looking for, only that they were 'of great importance'. It had all been a great chain of subterfuge and secrecy, and the last remaining evidence of their existence had been in Romania. With the murder of the Kelshaviks, there died the largest source of the last remaining knowledge of the Resistenza Ultima, after which it had supposedly disappeared from existence.

There had been one individual, who, to this day, remained under the alias Varias, who had written a tome about the event that was so obscure to history. He summarised the potion and had gone into great detail about the events surrounding the Resistenza Ultima, but he had not been able to actually look at the documents to find out what exactly it was made of, what the ancient texts had said, etc. He had chosen to remain anonymous, for obvious reasons; no one actually knew whether he had been a Kelshavik and escaped, or an official, or even an acquaintance of Miklos himself. Whoever he was, he had very carefully revealed nothing about himself.

But even though his book, _Resistenza_, had been published, he had apparently been almost bankrupt and had only published a few copies to see how well they would do. Unfortunately, no one particularly wanted to know or cared about Potions at the time, and so he had died impoverished. There had been five copies in all; she knew that one had belonged to the Romanian royal wizarding family, but had been lost when their house had been razed in a stream of riots. Another had been discovered in the library of a prestigious family gone wrong (disturbingly similar to the Malfoys) and had been destroyed. The other three, however, had no existing record of who owned them or where they were.

Which lead to the current situation. Evidently, Voldemort, possibly through reading a copy of _Resistenza_, had learnt of the documents. And, knowing Voldemort, was most likely doing everything possible to obtain them.

The brunette set down her now-empty glass and removed any traces of her existence from the room, before leaving the building -and the body- for the Aurors to find.

As she set off the alarm and Disapparated, she could only hope that Voldemort's attempts so far had been futile.


	2. Chapter 2

Severus Snape nudged his scrambled eggs listlessly around the plate with his fork, glaring at the yellow and white mix. The cup of burning, acid-like black coffee had woken him up, but did nothing to improve his mood or his throbbing headache. The noise in the Hall was unbearable, and it took all his willpower not to violently strangle the nearest person. It would have been particularly satisfying considering it was Dumbledore, smiling away as though he had never been happier in his life.

The usual flurry of white, brown, tawny gold and black flock of feathered Hermes' fluttered in, signalling the arrival of the owl post. Severus glowered darkly, which would have quelled any of the usual cheer that accompanied receiving the gifts and other such nonsense that parents felt compelled to spoil their little brats with.

The pin-drop silence that greeted him instead was so utterly eerie that Severus felt the fine hairs on his neck stand on end. The students were almost falling over each other to grab a copy of the newspaper, and the completely stunned silence in which they all dropped what they were doing to read was faintly disturbing. As his own copy thumped unceremoniously onto his artfully arranged breakfast, it took much effort not to lose his grip on the mug of acrid coffee.

'_LESTRANGES FOUND MURDERED'_, it read;

'_Bellatrix and Rabastan Lestrange, known Death Eaters, were discovered dead in what is believed to be their apartment, near Knockturn Alley. The Lestranges, cousins of the late Sirius Black, were active supporters of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. They escaped from Azkaban three years ago and were actively involved in the killing and torturing of wizards and Muggles alike._

_Bellatrix Lestrange's body was found on the floor in a small pool of blood. An eerie mark was left upon Lestrange's neck a fairly deep incision, in the shape of a cross, with a blood red rose laid across it. When Aurors searched the flat, Rabastan Lestrange was found dead on the roof, without any markings indicating cause of death. When Healers performed an autopsy, they found an unknown substance in his blood stream, which they have not yet identified. Whether this bears any significance, is unknown Story continued on page 2. See also pages 3, 4, 5, and 7.'_

Severus could only stare at the page in shock, though he was careful to school his features to show indifference. In the few years that the Dark Lord had regained power, Bellatrix had been one of the most highly sought-after Death Eaters.

Suspicion was at its height, not only among 'civilians, but among the Death Eater ranks. Severus was not so ignorant that he did not notice the ever-increasing distance between himself and others, or the furtive glances when he entered a room. Lucius Malfoy and his golden reputation were rapidly declining in popularity, but his desperate contributions had been his only saving grace. He flung his money and influence around as though they were simply flower petals among a bed of roses, as he had always done.

Bellatrix Lestrange's death would be a definite cause for celebration. Even as a schoolgirl, though one of the most beautiful in the school and known for her cadaverously stunning, dark allure, she was a cruel, heartless demon. Males cowered in her presence, yet were forever drawn in by her wiles, and the manic gleam in her eye only served to further disturb those around her. The callous, cold-blooded torturing of the Longbottoms, a well-loved, intelligent and strong couple, only brought more mud to her blackened name. Sirius Black's death at her hands had resulted in the pointless announcement of his innocence. If Bellatrix had had any respect before it, she certainly didn't have any afterwards.

Severus frowned more deeply still. The Order had been hunting down Death Eaters ever since the rise of Lord Voldemort, and Bellatrix had been, and was until today, particularly high on their list. They had searched the more dubious ends of both the Wizarding and Muggle worlds, but to no avail. Severus could not reveal any of their locations; when questioned, he said that he was bound by magic. He wondered vaguely if Albus ever suspected him of simply keeping it from them. It was very likely; Dumbledore might play the fool, but he never was one.

Regardless, there was still a greater issue at hand. The Order's attempts had been fruitless, and that was even with the use of people well-connected in the Ministry. Yet one person, or perhaps several, had managed to break into the tightly woven circle protecting the Dark Lord and his followers.

It stank of treachery.

The knowledge could be used in so many ways that Severus could not even begin to fathom the possibilities. Whether the murderer (or murderers) inclinations were towards the Dark or Light, he had no idea. Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.

Knowledge was powerful.

Severus wondered idly if they knew more than the Order. If that was the case, they would have to tread carefully. Power turned people's minds.

He would know.

Lord Voldemort was _not_ pleased.

Wormtail's small, pathetic form cowered in a dark corner of the dank, dusty room. He shot a silent prayer to the unforgiving heavens every time the Dark Lord cast a murderous look in his direction. Even Wormtail, idiot though he was, knew better than to penetrate the black cloud of intense fury. It enshrouded him like a storm cloud, ready to strike out with lightning at any moment.

The room was a massive dungeon and completely thrown into darkness from lack of any light source, save for an eerie bluish hue that was distributed randomly throughout the dark expanse. At one end stood a throne, majestic and gothic in design. Black with moving silver snakes writhing along the sides, it brought nightmarish panic to more than just raw recruits. It seemed to be coated in a wispy, almost liquid obsidian mist, which circled around it in a predatory fashion.

Rabastan was not much of a loss. Before Azkaban, he'd had many useful contacts and plenty of money, but other than his insatiable bloodlust, he served no further purpose. Bellatrix, however, had been one of Voldemort's most prized. One of the very few women, the first, in fact, to join the ranks, and she proved herself to be above any males. Half the circle was uneasy around her and disturbed by her tendencies; the other half were simple terrified. She preferred prolonged _playtimes_, cursing her victims to insanity rather than letting them die quickly and painlessly. Of all the Death Eaters, she had been the most eager at the Dark Revels.

Useful _and_ eager.

Her skills were also a great loss. Despite her cruel, unsettling, and somewhat crazed manner, she was intelligent and cunning, and had an excellent knowledge of rather nasty curses. She had been his best Unforgivable Curse caster, save Severus.

Severus. Voldemort sometimes wondered if he was not already lost to the old fool Dumbledore. Even at the beginning, he had never been eager to join in the 'festivities', preferring to be alone with his potions. He was always the quiet one, immersed in his work and providing Voldemort with whatever he needed or desired. He was so different from twenty years ago, was Severus. He had been a young, strong, handsome and intelligent man, eager to please when he had first joined the ranks. A light in his eyes that simply begged for power- for knowledge. Yet now, that light was gone, replaced by something so different. Something akin to resignation.

Still, Voldemort could not deny that he was useful.

The loss of one of his most faithful servants had been a huge blow, and his circle was in a state of disarray, frantically trying to find loopholes that the predator could have picked into. It disturbed him that someone had access to his inner ranks, which inevitably meant that Voldemort and his followers were in a significant amount of danger.

The only thing out of place in it all was that Dumbledore and his Disorder of the Philistines appeared to be just as clueless as he was. The old fool had been interviewed several times by the reporters of that scrap of rubbish they called a newspaper, each time saying that he had no information or knowledge on the subject. Whether it was an act or not, Voldemort didn't know. But Dumbledore was known for his cunning, and he wasn't going to take the chance of second guessing him.

Whatever it was, he didn't like it one bit. If this was happening behind Dumbledore's back, then something was terribly wrong.

It reeked of betrayal.

'WORMTAIL!' Voldemort roared, and the pathetic excuse of a being flinched, scurrying forward nervously.

'Y-y-yes m-m-m-my Lord?' he stammered fearfully, eyes wide in anticipation.

'Hold out your arm,' barked Voldemort, and pressed his wand into the Dark Mark on it. The snake writhed and hissed for a moment, then turned an angry red. He quickly let go, and Wormtail nursed his arm, cringing in pain.

Voldemort's snake-like face held clear disapproval as he raised his eyes to the high ceiling. The wisps had formed an exact replica of the Dark Mark, and one by one, each of his followers appeared around him, forming the familiar circle he had known for so many years.

With an artful sweep of his hand, the dungeon torches lit, throwing the expanse into a light with a soft, yellow light, completely at odds with the prevailing atmosphere. He turned to sit his throne, which was perched much higher above the circle, and looked menacingly over them. As the last black figure came into appearance, he sat back and began to speak.

'My loyal followers,' he drawled, coating some irony onto the words, 'as you must know, we have suffered a terrible loss. Two of our number are no longer with us.' There was a small pause as heads discreetly turned to the obvious gap, where Bellatrix and Rabastan had once stood.

'It seems that _someone_ has managed to jeopardise our position! And by doing so has endangered all that we strive for.' His voice was not more than a whisper, but the utter silence of the room was such that it rang in each and every masked figure's ears, with total, sonorous clarity.

'How _interesting_ that a complete outsider, not known either by the lot of bumbling fools they call our _Ministry_,' he spat with a tone of loathing, 'or even to Dumbledore, has managed to infiltrate our defences! After all that we have done to ensure their reliability, someone has broken in.'

Voldemort suddenly lifted himself off the chair. In an instant, the Death Eaters found themselves feeling as though they were in the hands of a predator, as though it were not _them_ circling _him_.

He turned slowly and deliberately, looking each and every one of his followers in the eyes. An anxious silence fell among them that seemed to never end. Some shifted their eyes away, unable to hold the probing stare of their Master that shot straight into them.

'_I sense treachery!_' Voldemort hissed, face contorted in a terrible mixture of paranoia and mania.

In an instant, Voldemort's voice transformed from the sibilant hiss to a soft, deep baritone. It was much more melodious, and much more dangerous.

'Mark my words: any bad blood, any effrontery, any rebellion, will be eliminated. I will have no subordination in my ranks.' With a final glare, and another sweeping gesture, the vast room seemed to ring with a hollow emptiness, the glow suddenly replaced with the wispy blue as though it had never been there. An absolute silence fell over the room once more as Voldemort turned back to his chair, signalling the end of the meeting.

As the Death Eaters turned to leave, Voldemort's voice halted them once more.

'Oh, by the way… Severus, Lucius? A word, if you please?'


End file.
